What's It All For?
by Something Less Than Epic
Summary: One murderous robot forces Mega Man to question the morality of the world around him. Watch out for mild language and a bit of graphic violence.
1. 1

The call came through at three in the morning. Naturally, everybody was asleep; the good doctor, slumped over at his desk, an unfinished gadget folded in his arms, awoke first. The buzz of the telephone was unmistakably harsh in his ears. He'd always wanted to replace that annoying sound with something more soothing, but his busy schedule forbade such luxuries.

Setting aside his still-skeletal invention (it would eventually turn into a newer, more efficient power cell for Mega Man's arm cannon) Dr. Light made a half-hearted lunge for the phone. He'd forever been sluggish in times of fatigue, and seldom managed to rouse himself to sufficient levels of consciousness without a good pot of coffee by his side. Naturally, there was no coffee present at the moment.

It took three tries for his bleary eyes to clear enough that he could grasp the receiver properly. Lifting it to a wizened ear, Light coughed, cleared his throat, and clicked the 'talk' button on the base of the phone. "Light here." It came out more along the lines of "Lickt hurr", however, his throat still hoarse from earlier that day (he'd given an extended lecture on robotic frame construction to throngs of excited students).

"Pardon me?" the voice on the other side inquired.

"Light here," the professor repeated, more clearly. It was a struggle to do so, however.

"Ahh, hello, sir. This is the Syphon City PD."

"You have any idea what time it is, son?"

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry to have disturbed you, but we need your help. Crime doesn't wait for the afternoon, you know."

Light rubbed his face, thoroughly annoyed. "Yeah, I know. Well, c'mon, out with it, if you would." His usually cordial manners fell to the wayside in the face of rough awakenings.

"Well, we have a bit of a situation, sir, and require the assistance of your robot."

"Wha, Rock? Er, Mega Man? What's the problem?" Visions of Wily danced through his head. It was enough to bring on a headache.

"There's a rogue robot loose in the city, sir, and he's stirring up a lot of trouble. Tore up our security bots pretty thoroughly."

"Oh, hell. Lemme guess, a certain doctor is behind it."

The officer understood instantly. "Well. . . we're not sure, sir. This thing is so fast that we can't get a positive ID on it. Plus, so far as we can tell, this is an isolated incident."

"Urgh." Light sighed, his mind rapidly attaining lucidity. "Well, give me the details."

-

Rock was woken within the hour, power cells fully charged. He did not appear the least bit tired, a state of mind Light thoroughly envied him. Being a robot looked pretty damn nice at times. Rush, his ever-faithful companion, lay curled at Rock's feet, canine eyes wide and alert.

"So, what's the call, doc?"

Dr. Light, still bereft of his usual tact, got right to the point. "There's a robot on the loose in Syphon City. The police out there need you to head in and bring it down."

Rock winced. He never much enjoyed killing his own kind, despite the fact that he'd done so hundreds of times. "Any idea who it is?"

Light shook his head, already messy white hair swaying to and fro chaotically. "Nope. They say the guy is too fast to pin a name on. Which is why they need you, of course."

Rock let out a breath of discontent. Mega Man the pro, Mega Man the hero. Robot killer supreme. It never seemed to end. "You think Wily's behind it?"

Light shook his head. "I doubt it. The whole thing lacks Wily's usual structuring. There's no plan behind it; just random chaos."

"I thought Wily was all about chaos, though."

Light rubbed his temples thoroughly. This next part would be hard to take. "This is different. The robot isn't trying to stir up the area, and weaken it for takeover. He's running around murdering people en masse."

The silence in the room was palpable.

"How many?"

"Forty. So far."

Light had never heard his creation swear before. But, then, this was new territory.

"You have to be kidding me. . . killing? Humans? I thought even Wily's robots were above that sort of thing."

"That's why I don't think this is Wily. He wants to rule the planet, not off the inhabitants. Unless he's popped a fuse or something in the last month, which I doubt."

Rock fell into brooding. This certainly was a fresh trick for a robot. Even when they went bonkers, they still usually retained one simple precept of their coding: you will not kill humans. It was an absolute basic of creating a robot, one even Wily abided by.

"Did he malfunction, maybe?"

Light shrugged. "Couldn't tell you. Only way to find out is for you to get out there and tear it apart."

Rock winced. Light, sensing the discomfort, patted his son in everything but substance on the shoulder.

"I know, I know. You hate this part. But robots can be rebuilt. Humans can't. You need to get out there and put a stop to this thing, regardless of what's wrong with it. Understand?"

A nod. Light, forever proud of his boy, tousled his spiky black hair.

"Good lad. All in a day's work for a hero, eh?"

Mega Man never felt much like a hero. "C'mon, Rush. Let's go."

-

Transport to Syphon City, as with any mapped locale, was simple: Mega Man leapt there. The technology behind it was one of Light's earliest patents. Set in coordinates, flick a mental switch, and the robot's molecules are partially disassembled and the reassembled at the proper place. Mega Man had done it so many times that the process was accomplished without any thought: to watch him do it was, for Light, always a bit of a debacle. The whole thing looked excruciatingly painful. No doubt that was why Light refused to do any human testing of the technology.

Sliding back out of his beam-like state, Mega Man surveyed the city. It was still dark, the sun not yet edging up over a sleepy horizon. The city streets, normally abandoned at this time of day, bustled with activity; indeed, it looked like a war zone.

Cars flipped over. Giant gashes in the concrete. Fires burning everywhere. Police officers, heavily clad in protective armour, darting here and there. Buildings torn apart. Bits of security bots scattered in every corner. Bodies.

Blood. Blood, blood, blood. Had he been capable of it, Mega Man would've vomited right then and there.

Rush, sensing turmoil in his master, rubbed up against Mega Man's leg. The blue bomber barely even noticed the sentiment. His augmented eyes were locked on horrors he'd never considered possible.

He'd read the history books before. Watched movies. Mankind was capable of so much wrong. Yet hearing about it second-hand was nothing to witnessing the truth of it all. Killing in the name of justice was one thing: but this, this. . . what was this? There was no justice in this. There didn't even seem to be a point.

As he stood there, bearings shaking with rage and revulsion, Mega Man was approached by an officer. It seemed miraculous that the man was alive, for he bore a huge gash across his armour. Mega Man could see his cloth uniform underneath. "You Mega Man?"

"Yeah. That's me."

"C'mon, I'll take you to the chief."

The chief was a huge man – presumably because he wore an exoskeleton to augment his skills – covered in dusty blue armour. He hefted an enormous energy rifle in both hands. Yet his enormous appearance did nothing to dispel the helplessness apparent in his stature, for every inch of him was decorated in deep nicks and slashes. Like his junior officer, it was only through the mercy of the killer that the chief still drew breath.

Shrugging off his helmet (he was, in fact, a bald man with a wagging moustache) the chief shook Mega Man's hand vigorously, balancing his rifle against one thick, metallic leg. "A pleasure. Glad you could make it out here so early."

"No problem. Where is he?"

The chief shook his head, setting his whiskers swaying. "Couldn't tell you. It let up and took off 'bout ten minutes ago. Last I saw it was up on that building over there," he thumbed towards a curling, spire-covered structure, "then vanished. Didn't get a good look at the thing, though."

"I can't believe how much destruction he caused. When did all this start?"

The chief, setting his rifle against a street sign, seated himself upon the sidewalk. It groaned under his weight. "I dunno. An hour ago, maybe? Two? It's been a bit of a blur. We've started counting just in bodies. Fifty-two now, by the way, including five of my men." His eyes settled off across the street, gazing at a fire hydrant, yet they seemed bound for the recent past instead. "This thing is unreal. Like nothing I've ever heard of. Faster than. . . hell, anything. It moves like the wind. One minute, you're fine, and the next, you've got a huge gash in you."

Mega Man swallowed hard. He mentally ran through long lists of any of Wily's robots that could fit the bill, but none sounded speedy enough. Quick Man, maybe?

"And he did all of this?"

The chief shook his head. "Not completely. The security bots had a hell of a time trackin' him, and wound up destroying a few things before being taken out themselves. They're not the smartest robots out there, y'know."

Nod. Stepping forward, Mega Man ran his fingers over the gashes on the chief's armour. His eyes turned into magnifying glasses, inspecting the sheered edges of each cut. Whatever had done this, it was incredibly sharp, and very well maintained; yet he doubted it was an energy weapon of any kind. A few tiny jagged spots saw to that conclusion.

"Was he using any weapons you could see?"

"Looked like it was throwin' these weird little disks. Hard to tell, though."

It was Quick Man's MO, all right, yet he didn't fit the bill in Mega Man's mind. His boomerangs weren't capable of this much damage. Besides, he was dead, and Mega Man doubted Wily would've rebuilt him just to destroy things like this. The old man generally dropped any projects that had previously failed him.

"We'll look around. Hopefully we can find this guy quick."

"Good luck. And be careful; it's dangerous as anything."

Mega Man exhaled deeply. "Please don't call us 'it'. The name is demeaning."


	2. 2

"Over there, Rush. Check for a scent. Peculiar lubricants, unusual energy patterns, anything."

Hyper intelligent as he was – Mega Man seldom thought of Rush as a dog, and more a straight-up partner – Rush understood the command given to him, and bounded over to his assigned quadrant of space: a back alley. His nose snuffled every bit of trash and refuse thoroughly, looking for anything of interest.

Mega Man had no doubt that something would be found. Light had installed the finest olfactory programs (ones tweaked to his own specifications, of course) into Rush, and he was on par with any crime unit specialist out there. Aside from being a good friend and moral support, Rush was an invaluable tool.

"Tool," the bomber muttered to himself, "shouldn't call him that. We're both tools, really."

And who could rightly deny that logic? They were robots. Creations of wrench and cog. No more living than a cup or a hammer. The only difference was his function: his was more complex than the standard invention.

Well, intelligence was nice, too. Mega Man could always reason his way through things. A cup couldn't. Could it?

Shifting his eyes into almost a dozen different spectrums, Mega Man surveyed the area. Aside from several of the vicious gashes that seemed to perforate everything around, nothing stood out. The cuts themselves were of little interest, aside from yielding up the knowledge that the perpetrator held no beam-based weaponry. Following the trail of destruction did nothing for the search, either, for it was everywhere: this robot seemed to ricochet off of everything in sight, casting a wide net of destruction over the entire third district.

And there were nine districts in Syphon City. Which would be next?

Things seemed quiet for the moment, however. Perhaps the robot had gone somewhere to refuel itself. It was Mega Man's hope that it held only a limited repertoire of weaponry, and after exhausting said repertoire would be rendered useless: however, the lack of incriminating devices at the scene – any one of the scenes – destroyed this hope. Whatever the robot was using, it could use it over and over again.

Yeah, probably refuelling.

They searched for an hour. Two. Three. Midway, the sun began to slide up out of the darkness and cast a pale face upon the world. The police, still cautiously searching themselves, urged the now emerging workforce to stay at home for the time being. Having experienced difficulties with malicious robots in the past – both Top Man and Heat Man had taken up residence in Syphon City at different points – the residents readily complied with this request. Mega Man and Rush were left to search amongst the lonely streets unmolested.

And they found nothing. Not a single trace of the robot: just more mayhem, more slashes, more bodies. According to the last police report Mega Man received, the corpse count had risen to over a hundred.

("How is that possible?"

"Its been sneaking into people's apartments. Tearing 'em up inside. What we've seen so far is pretty grotesque."

"Ugh."

"No clues, either.")

Frustration was mounting. More, Mega Man's robotic soul was quickly becoming tinged with depression. He was feeling responsible for the deaths now. It never took this long to deal with robots in the past. Clearly, he was doing something wrong.

The robot realised this. He had been following Mega Man for some time, committing unspeakable atrocities mere buildings away for the beleaguered sleuth to lock onto. Apparently, he'd been a little too sneaky.

Mega Man was sitting on a bench, wringing his hands with weary annoyance, Rush at his feet, when the robot struck. Because of his heavily augmented hearing, Mega Man heard the projectile whizzing towards him almost immediately; dodging it, however, was a bit trickier. With a mighty heave Mega Man rolled sideways and off of the bench mere seconds before it was shredded in two. Split pieces of wood flew into the air and hung there, suspended in that moment, moving with incredible slowness (or at least they did to Mega Man's eyes). It all happened so quickly that he slowed down his mental timing so as to process the event more effectively.

The weapon was there and gone with the space of a breath, yet that breath was enough. It was a pair of magnetically guided scissors, opened as widely as possible. Its task complete, the blades were pulled mercilessly back, spinning swiftly, to their owner.

Mega Man readjusted his internal clock as he hit the pavement. Rush was off to one side, barking like mad, ears alert for any further movement. Now fully alert, Mega Man raised his arm cannon and brought it to bear on the alley he figured the scissors had vanished into.

The culprit, now, was known.

"Get out here, Cut Man!"

Silence. Mega Man rose quickly, cannon still poised, face taut.

"I mean it, Cut Man! Out!"

The voice that emerged instead was almost shy. A wavering purr. Mega Man remembered it well: he'd known Cut Man before Wily ever got his hands into the woodman's circuitry. Yet the shyness held instability in it, some sly hatred. "Aww, but I was just having some fun."

Had he been capable of producing saliva, Mega Man would've spat at the thought. "Like hell you were. I've seen what you've done. Come out into the sunlight, murderer."

He could see slight movement amidst the shadows of the alley, from behind a trashcan; yet Cut Man remained implacable. He wouldn't emerge. "Oh, my, what a firebrand we have here. And you used to be such a polite boy, Rock."

"The name's Mega Man, scum."

That brought gales of high pitched, panicky laughter. "Ho ho ho! Ha! Indeed, indeed! Avenger of justice, master of the arm cannon, and all that rubbish! He he he! Yes, I've heard that before; it was the last name I heard before I got blown to pieces, in fact!"

Mega Man winced. It was relatively common knowledge that Cut Man was the first of Wily's commander robots that Mega Man had ever destroyed. The experience had been. . . unpleasant, to be sure.

"How are you still functioning, Cut Man?"

The figure shifted, almost imperceptibly, as if in some discomfort. Mega Man could hear an odd sort of chattering coming from the alley, though it ended before Cut Man spoke next.

"Oh, well, that's a funny story. Uproarious, in fact. See, when you did me in, you did a poor job of it. Piss-poor. Only blew up my bottom half! Hilarious!" Some more laughter, loud and braying. "I was given the leisure to crawl out of my lair and out, into the wide wide world, to find some way to survive."

"Did you go back to Wily?"

"Of course! He was the master! My master! But he just kicked me out, called me junk. A reject. I'd failed to beat you, so, I should just get the hell out. Fabulous man, isn't he?"

"But that was more than three years ago. Why start this now?"

But Cut Man was no longer listening. "You know, Rock. . . I've had a lot of time to think. Do you ever think, Rock? Do you like to think?"

Taken off guard somewhat, Mega Man coughed. "Um. . . yes, I think ever-"

"Aha! So you do! Somebody else does! It's good to know I'm not alone, Rock. It's awfully lonely, being alone. Have you ever been alone before?"

Despite the unsettling nature of this sudden line of inquiry, Mega Man thought back upon his life. "Yeah, I've been alone some times. Why is this-"

He hit a nerve, obviously, because Cut Man began to shriek, and three pairs of scissors embedded themselves around Mega Man. He was forced to leap straight up in order to avoid one of them. "NO! YOU HAVEN'T! JUST SHUT UP, YOU HAVEN'T!"

Mega Man couldn't understand. This was all so new to him. Cut Man was acting as though he had every last one of his circuits crossed. Mega Man would've chalked it up to mental instability, had Cut Man not been a robot. Landing hard, he fell to one knee and strafed the garbage can with a spray of yellow energy blasts.

Cut Man, however, had already moved. More nimble than any robot, he'd bounded up the side of the alleyway and landed on the edge of a grocery store roof. Locked on to his foe now, Mega Man's attention was immediately drawn towards the roof, and he grimaced at what he saw.

Cut Man had borne the closest design basis for Mega Man's blue armour. Their body types were strikingly similar; where Mega Man was navy blue and blue, Cut Man was red and white. That and Cut Man's lack of arm cannon were the only significant differences, aside from the head. Yet what Mega Man witnessed now looked little like himself; indeed, Cut Man was a bloody, junky mess.

His bottom half, entirely scrounged, was covered in poorly applied metal sheets and exposed wiring. Jagged pieces of circuitry jutted from every crevice. His boots, once a nicely polished red, were now replaced by grotesque metallic toes, now dug deeply into the concrete. On each leg hung what appeared to be a projectile launcher, in fact lined with magnetic alloys: they would send scissors flying outwards and incredible speeds and then bring them whirling back to be redeployed later. Mega Man could see clearly that these casings were dripping with fresh blood, with more, dried liquid caked onto the sides.

His torso, normally a neat and tidy white surface, now twisted and curled with flowing tubes and freely visible cogs. Mega Man could see the word 'CUT' etched into the metal in several places, and grew steadily aghast at the thought of Cut Man doing this to himself. Cut Man's arms were little better: only one bore the customary red glove. The other had been replaced by a truly gigantic pair of scissors, poorly held on by substantial amounts of soldering and pinching clamps.

But most hideous of all was Cut Man's head. One of his eyes was gone, an empty socket clearly evident. The other sparked weakly, kept alive by a constant influx of energy supplied with rubber tubing. The tubes slid in underneath the whites of his eye, creating a series of small, ugly bumps along the surface. One ear appeared to be half gone; the other was lined with rusted gears and looped pieces of metal. The only thing that did not appear to be different on Cut Man, really, was his head scissors. They gleamed cleanly in the pale sun.

"Oh my god," Mega Man whispered to himself. The sight of Cut Man was utterly atrocious.

Cut Man sneered and began to yell anew. "YOU DON'T KNOW LONELINESS! YOU DON'T! ONLY I DO! SO JUST SHUT THE HELL UP, ROCK!"

"Cut Man, what have you done to yourself? Is. . . is all this. . ."

Cut Man's projectile scissors flew back to him, one slicing neatly past Mega Man's helmet. "YOU DON'T. . . you haven't a clue. . . nobody does. . . what's it all for, Rock? What's the point? WHAT'S THE POINT, ROCK?"


	3. 3

"Allow me to share a revelation with you, Rock." Cut Man paced back and forth, toes clinking idly against the edge of the roofing. The sound maddened Mega Man nearly as much as Cut Man's flippancy. He'd just been screaming at Mega Man, pouring out an electronic soul the bomber hadn't been aware robots possessed: now, though, Cut Man had become oddly lecturing in his tone. All in the space of five seconds, no less.

"It's about robots. Did you guess that much, Rock?" Laughter, tinged with instability. "We're not built to be alone. Not misfits. I mean, look at most of us! I've seen Wily's ever more elaborate attempts at construction since I got thrown into the dust pile. We're outlandish, perverse things." He paused, tapping his chin idly, as if ruminating over his words. "Yes. Outlandish."

Mega Man magnified his eyes. The remnants of blood seemed to be caked onto Cut Man's frame. No big surprise there; it certainly made the presentation as a whole more ghoulish. "Cut Man, what-"

"YOU WILL NOT SPEAK WHILE I'M TALKING!" A pair of scissors dashed through the air towards Mega Man, one aimed at his throat, the other his midsection. It took a sort of leaning roll to avoid both of them, and the latter still managed to clip Mega Man's torso on its pass. Tiny sparks erupted from within his shredded suit, robotic innards now partially exposed. Programmed to simulate pain, Mega Man gasped and collapsed.

Cut Man didn't miss a beat in his little diatribe after that small interruption. Ignoring his weapons as they slid back into place at his sides, the maddened robot continued with his already contorted and contradictive speech. "Perfect misfits. But we're not built for loneliness! We seek out community! We're given hordes of fellow mechanicals! Right? Even you, not one amongst us, have your own robotic friends."

Mega Man had to acknowledge that much as being true, writhing about on the pavement though he was. His friends – Dr. Light, Roll, Rush (who even now leapt to his side protectively, ready to assault Cut Man with barking yet not quite daring to), perhaps even Proto Man – defined Mega Man's world. They gave him something worth fighting for, beyond the usual abstract concepts of 'justice' and 'morality'.

"Indeed, we are not misfits. . . but are we?" A slight facial tic. "We have community. We have class. We do not reject one another, even amongst enemies." Tic. "And then there's me."

Crawling laboriously onto one knee, energy cells partially depleted from the hit, Mega Man studied Cut Man. There was an indescribable sadness in that marred, cyclopean face, full of concerns and worries Mega Man couldn't even fathom. Despite his monstrous appearance, Mega Man somehow identified Cut Man as being the more human of the two in that moment.

"There's me. Even before I was like this. . . before Wily. . . tampered with me. . . I was a reject. And why?" Both his arm and head scissors snapped open and shut excitedly, caught in Cut Man's building rage. "Why? I don't understand. I looked a little silly, maybe; I wasn't fancy, maybe; but neither were YOU!" A stab of the finger. "YOU, some stupid blue-clad little peon, why was I shunned? I was even more useful! Yet none of the robots ever wanted anything to do with me! Why was I different?" A tiny bit of lubricant began to seep out of his empty eye socket.

Mega Man wanted to counter it. With all of his being, he wished he could. But Cut Man, in his twisted revelry, was speaking the truth: back when the original six robots still bore only Dr. Light's programming, they all had a tendency to shut out Cut Man. He'd seemed a total reject, for reasons unfathomable. Neglected, berated, and abused. Despite his best efforts, Dr. Light could never manage to wipe this atrocious tendency from any of his creations.

"Shunned! Scorned! And why? Because my ears looked stupid? I had a silly function? I CUT THINGS, DAMN YOU ALL! WHAT ELSE SHOULD I LOOK LIKE? WHY AM I THE ONLY MISFIT, A REJECT AMONGST CLOWNS AND FOOLS AND MORONS?" Tic. Tic. Lubricant flowed freely, spilling down his cold metal cheek, filling the cracks in some of his tubing.

"And what's the point of it all, anyway? We're just a bunch of tools. Glorified killing machines. Wily sees it. We're useless for practical measures. Ha, ha! Killing!"

"Is that why you're killing all these people? Cut Man?"

But Cut Man was gone. Despite the grotesquery's of his appearance, his self-installed components did their job well: indeed, it was because of his lack of concern for physical form that he was able to alter himself so powerfully. His legs bore miniaturized turbines and engines, used for the express purpose of incredibly quick movement. His back, too, bore small rockets, allowing for a remarkably fast descent. All this created a situation in which Mega Man could not follow Cut Man's movements, to the point that the tortured robot was able to stand at Mega Man's back for almost a half a second before either the blue bomber or his faithful dog realised where he was.

Yet, again, the lecture continued on without a change in pace. "I suppose that's possible, Rock. Entirely, completely possible. But then, I suppose I shouldn't be, should I? We robots aren't supposed to kill humans. Oh no no no no no. Bad, that."

Rush, evidently tired of the scene, decided he would brook no more of this treatment. A close-combat dog by design, he'd been fitted with a great number of distracting devices by Light; the idea would be that whichever device used would direct the opponent's attention away from Rush for a few brief seconds, allowing Rush to close in and attack mercilessly. Cute or no, Rush was a war machine.

In this case, he chose a small, noisy, explosive ball bearing, fired from a miniature cannon stored in his forehead. With a gentle whiz the pellet zipped forward and smacked into a wall, releasing a harmless yet thunder clapping puff of smoke and sound. And, indeed, shocked out of his rant, Cut Man gazed in its direction for a couple moments, enough to give Rush some latitude in the situation. He leapt, fangs extending, claws bared, at Cut Man's back.

The attack nearly worked. Nearly. Despite his poor mental faculties, Cut Man still possessed impressive sensory equipment, a repertoire that instantly came online and detected the threat. A few nanoseconds was all it took for the disfigured pariah to snap into action, spinning and catching Rush in a vice grip with his gigantic claw. Almost immediately it tore into Rush's vital systems, nearly snapping the dog in half; only through diabolic intention did Cut Man keep himself restrained.

"Ahh, bad doggy! Bad!"

Mega Man attempted to stand, to protest, to attack, but to no avail; Cut Man held the reigns of power. With a brutal gesture of contempt Cut Man smacked the beleaguered warrior aside using the remnants of his own dog, who, still caught upon those terrible claws, howled piteously and desperately for release. Mega Man went sprawling into the side of a building and slid to a halt, electric energy bleeding out of his wound (one, he marvelled, that seemed far deeper than originally estimated).

"Ooo, bad Rock! Bad super hero! Bad, bad, BAD!"

Rush fell from betwixt the blades. His systems automatically shut down, to perverse what life he still retained.

"My, everybody's bad today! Me, you, doggy, the world! Especially those people who wouldn't stop screaming before they died!"

His shadow fell down over Mega Man, towering and misshapen.

"You don't know what it's like to be alone, Rock. To never have a person in your end of the ring. Even when Wily messed with my circuits, I was still on my own. And Light, well, when he built me, he must've installed something that kept me alone. Made me seem like some pathetic loser to everyone else. What right did he have to do that, Rock?"

Mega Man gasped as Cut Man's head scissors impaled themselves into the wall above his helmet, bringing Cut Man's giant, accusing eye to bear on Mega Man's wincing ones. Oil dribbled down upon Mega Man's uniform.

"I should have been you, Rock. I should have been the hero. I was made to fight, to kill. You were some servant. An assistant. Why did you get favoured over me, Rock? Why was everyone favoured over me?"

Sliding one hand back to his blade projectors, Cut Man disengaged the magnetic guidance system on one and carefully removed a set of gleaming scissors from within. Mega Man caught his reflection in one of the blades, taut and pale. His energy was seeping away fast.

"I often forgot who I was, Rock. . . a lot. . . I found it easier to remember by. . . immortalizing myself." A sole pupil, tinged with tainted purpose, slid down to Mega Man's chest. "I'll immortalize you, too."

And before Mega Man could argue, cold steel, impossibly sharp, etched its way into his chest plate. The pain, simulated thought it was, seemed utterly unbearable, and continued for several lifetimes or more: and, upon completing his task, Cut Man stepped back to observe his work.

'ROCK'.

"Now I won't forget you, either."

And he was gone, this time for real.


End file.
